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fourteen.”
    “Oh.”
    “They are giving a concert tomorrow evening in the baseball park. It seems there are no more tickets available.”
    President Harper pursed his lips. “I think we ought to be able to get her a ticket.”
    “Three tickets? I won’t let her go without some security to protect her.”
    “Three tickets,” said the President. “I’ll see to it.”
    “Thank you very much. She is my only child, you know, and—”
    “Think nothing of it,” Harper said, gesturing him toward the door. “I have three kids. They were all teenagers once. I wouldn’t go through that again for the world!”

January 4, 2035
    Earth Departure Minus Three Months
    14:00 Universal Time
    Clear Lake, Texas

    McGillicudy’s Pool Salon and Games Arcade was less than a half-hour drive from the main gate of Johnson Space Center. It was a strange place for a meeting of the team of scientists and astronauts who were to make the voyage to Mars.
    Benson Benson took his responsibility as command pilot very seriously—so seriously that he had called this furtive meeting of the flight team in this unlikely place. No photographers, no news hounds—not even Treadway—and no NASA suits. Just the eight men and women who would be spending the next two years living together.
    One by one they came in, looking puzzled, even suspicious as they stepped into the nearly empty poolroom. At ten in the morning, McGillicuddy’s was almost devoid of customers: just a couple of truck drivers clacking balls across one of the pool tables, a lone pimpled teenager intently working one of the pinging digital game consoles, and three fairly disreputable-looking regulars drinking morosely at the bar.
    Benson had come early enough to push a couple of tables in the restaurant area together, so that all eight of them could sit together.
    Catherine Clermont arrived first, looking as if she had just stepped off the pages of a sophisticated magazine—as usual. The French geologist had an impeccable sense of style. She was petite, fine-boned. Her face looked almost ordinary until she began to speak: then it took on an animation and liveliness that sparkled.
    She stood at the entrance, blinking at the unfamiliar surroundings, until she spotted Benson standing among the tables. With a slightly bemused smile, she headed swiftly toward him.
    “Bee, am I the first?” she asked as she approached, her French accent barely noticeable.
    “By a hair,” Benson said, pointing toward the door. Virginia Gonzalez, their communications specialist, pushed the door open and came striding toward them. Tall and slim as a fashion model, as she passed the bar even the bleary-eyed regulars turned on their stools to stare at her.
    Hiram McPherson, the team’s other geologist came next, followed by Amanda Lynn, the biologist. A thickset African American, Amanda scowled at the barflies almost belligerently.
    “Do you want something to drink?” Bee asked them as they sat along the table. “Or to eat?”
    McPherson, tall, rangy, sporting a thick dark beard, grinned wryly. “Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch.”
    Benson nodded. “The others should be here in a few minutes.”
    Taki Nomura, their medical doctor, was next, with Mikhail Prokhorov, the meteorologist, right behind her. They made an unlikely pair: Taki was short, stocky, her round face almost always smiling pleasantly; Prokhorov was not much taller, but gave the impression of size and strength even though his normal expression was dour, downcast.
    “That’s all of us,” said Gonzalez, “except for Ted.”
    Benson nodded tightly. “We’ll give him another couple of minutes.”
    “Not like Ted to be late,” McPherson noted.
    “He’ll be here,” Benson said, with a certainty that he did not really feel.
    Connover’s ticked that he wasn’t named command pilot , he thought. Is he going to be a soreheaded prima dona? We can’t have that. We just can’t.
    At that moment, the door swung open again and